"Inconsistency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... if it could have been proved, that Christianity had been fatal in the way of a magical charm to the Oracles of the world, would have proved nothing but a perplexing inconsistency, so long as the fathers were obliged to confess that Paganism itself, as a gross total, as the parent superstition (sure to reproduce Oracles faster than they could be extinguished), had been suffered to exist for many centuries concurrently with Christianity, and had finally been overthrown by ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... to take it by the hands in a spirit of friendship. We have been told that the long stagnation has been caused by the absurd scruples of the pendulum, which refused to go from side to side, lest it should be accused of inconsistency.' Under the different months, 'PUNCH'S Almanack' gives many important directions, one of which is for the proprietors of the public gardens: 'Now trim your lamps, water your lake, graft new noses on statues, plant your money-taker, and if the season be ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. My own opinion is, that a calm comparison of these assertions of universal abstract truths, and of their own individual opinions and acts, would not leave these men under any reproach of inconsistency; that the great truths they asserted on that solemn occasion they were ready and anxious to make effectual; wherever a necessary regard to circumstances, which no statesman can disregard without producing more evil than good, would allow; and that it would not be just to them, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... Boston compelled a little legislative action and the result was what might have been expected in a State in which religious opinions are allowed to interfere with the credibility of a witness, and in which Diogenes, if he were here, would be struck with the vast inconsistency between the creed of Christendom and its practice, and the vast disparity between the progress of modern knowledge and the effete system of education in our Universities. He would wonder why modern colleges are more interested in ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... that right from fear of losing the parliamentary support of the Romanists, their bill was seen by the public to be a sham. This circumstance, taken in connection with the premier's vehement letter to the Bishop of Durham, threw an imputation of inconsistency and insincerity upon the political character of Lord John Russell, which impaired his subsequent ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... with the world warm about her. And he well knew why his Nataly had her look of a closed vault (threatening, if opened, to thunder upon Life) when he dropped his further hints. He chose to call it feminine inconsistency, in a woman who walked abroad with a basket of marriage-ties for the market on her arm. He knew that she would soon have to speak the dark words to their girl; and the idea of any doing of it, caught at his throat. Reasonably ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... security, leisure, independence, and love of honest work, but the hope of migrating to the middle class, and becoming a capitalist on a small scale. That was the last thing that Morris desired. Most of all he felt the charge of inconsistency that was dinned into his ears. It was held ridiculous that a wealthy capitalist and a large employer of labour, living, if not in luxury, at least in considerable stateliness, should profess Socialist ideas without attempting to disencumber himself of his wealth. He wrote ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... replied; 'I retain its complete exercise. To the proof: instead of attempting to cloak my inconsistency, I have, by way of preparing you, thrown it into strong relief. You will there, I think, recognise the philosopher who has the ecstasy to call you wife. The fact is, I have been reckoning all this while without an accident. ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pathognomonic symptom of stupor conditions, there are other mood anomalies to be noted. One of these is the tendency for inconsistency in, as well as reduction of, the expression of emotion. For instance, in the states where one would expect anxiety during the onset of stupor or in its interruptions, manifestation of this anxiety is often reduced to an expression of dazed bewilderment. In the anxiety ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... the circus who rode several horses at a time. In the case I allude to, he set up no less than seven defences to account for the unhappy duck's finding its way into his client's pocket, and the charm of them all was their variety. Inconsistency was not the word to apply reproachfully. Inconsistency was Codd's merit. He was like a conjurer who asks you to name a card, and as surely as you do so you draw ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... deputation of wig-makers waited on George III. to protest against the hair-powder-tax, the mob, seeing that one of them wore his own hair, ducked him forthwith in Tower-Ditch,—a very Anglo-Saxon comment on his inconsistency. We should not have noticed these passages in Mr. Bartlett's Introduction, had he not, after eleven years' time to weigh them in, let them remain as they stood in his former edition, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... thoroughgoing Wesleyan, who sometimes fancies that the condition of souls is so desperate as to leave no time for good manners. Mr. Calvert had no fault to find with Stevens's civility, but there was certainly an inconsistency between his deportment now, and those characteristics which were to be predicated of the manner and mode of his very recent conversion. Besides, there was the story of the brandy-flask, in which Calvert saw much less of honor either to John ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... be that a long list of inconsistencies might be made out for any country, just as for any individual; but so far as my knowledge goes the United States stands out as preeminently the "Land of Contrasts"—the land of stark, staring, and stimulating inconsistency; at once the home of enlightenment and the happy hunting ground of the charlatan and the quack; a land in which nothing happens but the unexpected; the home of Hyperion, but no less the haunt of the satyr; always the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... her kindly tasks, good Norbert, uses for her unguent our own perfect inconsistency: and often when we are stabbed deep in the breast she distracts us by thin scratches in other parts, that in the itch of these we may forget the greater hurt till it be healed. Thus, the remembrance of last night, when you undisguisedly ran from the wrath ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... fantastic side of America, I allow beforehand that some of it may be meant to be fantastic. And indeed it is very difficult to believe that some of it is meant to be serious. But whether or no there is a joke, there is certainly an inconsistency; and it is an inconsistency in the moral make-up of America which both puzzles ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... are obliged to condemn, have thought fit to renew the Company's old order against contracting private debts in future. They begin by rewarding the violation of the ancient law; and then they gravely reenact provisions, of which they have given bounties for the breach. This inconsistency has been well exposed.[51] But what will you say to their having gone the length of giving positive directions for contracting the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the usage or acknowledgment of nations. According to these a belligerent takes to itself a commerce with its own enemy which it denies to a neutral on the ground of its aiding that enemy in the war; but reason revolts at such inconsistency, and the neutral having equal right with the belligerent to decide the question, the interests of our constituents and the duty of maintaining the authority of reason, the only umpire between just nations, impose on us the obligation of providing an effectual and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Thomas Jefferson • Thomas Jefferson
... After their inconsistency and vacillation upon so important a subject as the Divorce clause, and voting against their own declared opinion on a measure which they had themselves originated, what dependence could we, small as could ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... of their Father as imprudent. The vicar-general, nevertheless, in conjunction with the ministers, made some regulations for the government of the provinces which were very useful; but, by a strange inconsistency, at the time when they were talking of modifications, they prescribed total abstinence from meat, and forbade its use either in or out of the cloisters, which was a direct contradiction of the rule, which ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... the discredit with which Pleydell had treated it. 'Assuredly,' thought Sampson to himself, 'he is a man of erudition, and well skilled in the weighty matters of the law; but he is also a man of humorous levity and inconsistency of speech, and wherefore should he pronounce ex cathedra, as it were, on the hope expressed by worthy ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... if possible, still more astonished. Having counted on general Marion as his firmest foe, they were utterly mortified to find him his fastest friend, and, venting their passion with great freedom, taxed him with inconsistency and fickleness that but illy suited with general ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... accorded to my brother's congregation, of singing his magnificent hymns." By this time the whole house came down in a perfect roar, and the confused blush on Bonar's face puzzled us—whether it was on account of the compliment, or on account of his own inconsistency. However, before his death he consented to have his own congregation sing his own hymns, although it is said that two pragmatical elders rose and strode indignantly down the aisle of ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... themselves with him for the purpose of driving from office a statesman with whom they cannot be said to have differed as to any important question. Nor had they even the prudence and the patience to wait for some occasion on which they might, without inconsistency, have combined with their old enemies in opposition to the government. That nothing might be wanting to the scandal, the great orators, who had, during seven years, thundered against the war, determined ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... extinct Dinornis, where again we meet in this particular with a sudden and sublime indifference to the maintenance of a typical structure. (Fig. 6.)[4] Now I say that if the theory of ideal types is true, we have in these facts evidence of a most unreasonable inconsistency. But the theory of descent with continued adaptive modification fully explains all the known cases; for in every case the degree of divergence from the typical structure which an organism presents corresponds, in a general ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... not fail to point out the inconsistency of condemning the Government scheme for its complexity and then immediately proposing another which would involve not one but a dozen partitions and make the political map of Ireland look like a crazy quilt. He advised the House to reject Mr. ASQUITH'S ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... of addressing public audiences four times in my whole life, and but four—two of these were in favour of Old Tip, in 1840, and the other two upon the subject of temperance. I am well aware that there are many persons who would look upon it as a sort of inconsistency that a man, occupying my position, should be the honest advocate of temperance—but they so reason because they are uninformed in regard to the higher order ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... its immorality—the bishop's death-bed is surrounded by his natural sons and the wealth he leaves has been purchased by every kind of iniquity—its pride of life; its luxury; its semi-Paganism; its imitative classicism; its inconsistency; its love of jewels, and fine stones, and rich marbles; its jealousy and envy; its pleasure in the adornment of death; its delight in the outsides of things, in mere workmanship; its loss of originality; its love of ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... nevertheless considered the only distinction a woman could achieve was through their favourable notice—an attitude of mind produced by moral and social codes so effectively calculated to foster immoral and untenable inconsistency! ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... was in sarcastic allusion to the inconsistency of a religious order being an immensely wealthy organization, while its individual members were vowed to poverty. News, published everywhere except in the Philippines, of losses sustained in outside commercial enterprises running into the millions, ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... 3. The inconsistency of capitalization (e.g., Sub-section/sub-section, Sergeant/sergeant) and punctuation (mostly inside/outside quotation marks) are ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... way," he added, significantly. I did not pause to reflect that the Colonel's attitude, from his point of view (yes, and from mine,—had I not adopted it?) was the logical one. In that philosophy every man had his price, or his weakness. Yet, such is the inconsistency of human nature, I was now unable to contemplate ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... with the Central Empires, to be followed by a mobilization, marked the end of Greek neutrality. King Alexander, as yet a novice in statecraft, expressed surprise at the inconsistency between these acts and the repeated assurances given to the Greek people. He was told that the accession of M. Venizelos could mean nothing else but war: his Majesty knew it: having accepted Venizelos, he must ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... for the figure. It was very plain that Miss Trevor was radiantly happy; she was easily the handsomest girl in the room, and I could not help philosophizing when I saw her looking up into the Celebrity's eyes upon the seeming inconsistency of nature, who has armed and warned woman against all but ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... invincible." The anger of the old man vanished at once: he now thought only how he might console his son for the affront put upon him, and he gave him back his power, exhorting him only to conduct himself with more moderation and gentleness towards his subjects. All was inconsistency and contrast with these robust, rough, hasty souls; they cared little for belying themselves when they had satisfied the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... notice her inconsistency. "Yes, the wilderness is all right for a vacation, but I prefer Chicago for ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies. Accordingly he stands stoutly by the planters and the feudal scheme of subordination, whose annihilation he maintains would 'shut the gates of mercy on mankind.' For his apparent inconsistency Burke is attacked:— ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... of the recent war have the European nations been forced to wipe out the stain of illegitimacy, and in America we are still blind to this necessity. Only Scandinavia, under the leadership of such minds as Ellen Key's, was roused to this inconsistency in the mores without external pressure, and enacted legislation concerning illegitimacy which may well serve as a model to the whole world. The main points of the Norwegian Castberg bill are as follows: The child whose parents are unmarried has a ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... his Epistles be arranged in chronological order, it will easily be seen that there is a splendid growth in his theology from first to last. He never, indeed, gave up the doctrines of his earlier life; there is no inconsistency between one part of his writings and another; but neither his experience nor his thinking ever stood still; he made his first doctrines the foundations on which he reared a structure which was rising higher and higher to the very close ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... all rotten," she said bitterly, then added with feminine inconsistency, "Go on, Dan, be a darling. Fix it so I can speak to him without the old man ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... Emily had been irate then, and all the more when her mother tried to cover her inconsistency by alleging that everybody knew of Lord Torwood's fall, whereas no one knew or cared who Francis Dayman was, or where he came from. Henceforth Emily's shame at the usage of Fulk had been double—or rather it turned into indignation. Reports that he was to marry a rich grazier's ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the physical superiority of the North, or the necessity of peace and quiet to enable the new generation of Southerners to restore their fortunes, or even gain a livelihood. Nor was it easy to impress them with the inconsistency of arguing that it was slavery which made Southerners what they were before they went to war, and maintaining at the same time that the disappearance of slavery would produce no change in their manners, ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... always fair in his comparisons and judgments, and whether he did not overlook elements of the gravest importance in the inquiry; whether, in fact, save for certain strong and broad lines common to the whole historic Church, the reign of anomaly, inconsistency, difficulty did not extend much farther over the whole field of debate than he chose to admit: all this is fairly open to question. But within the limits which he laid down, and within which he confined his reasonings, he used his materials with skill and force; and even those who least agreed with ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... An apparent inconsistency in references to the major divisions of the University may be noted by some readers. These are sometimes referred to as "Departments" and sometimes as "Schools" or "Colleges," as the case may be. This arises from the fact that the official nomenclature was ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... defiance, on her face when my eyes fell on her, and it changed to one that pleased me still better (which I won't describe) when our eyes met. You, you unbelieving dog, think that because she is "strong-minded" she must be repulsive and immodest. But there is a charming inconsistency about female human nature. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... one else in the house represented law and order to him—Elise was the spirit of outlawry, and he her slave. She taught him a dance of her own invention entitled 'The Devil and the Maiden' (with a certain inconsistency casting him as the maiden and herself as the Devil), and frequently, when ordered to go to bed, they would descend to the servants' quarters and perform it to the great delight of the ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... matron—"Know, youth, that a mother knows not hunger till that of her child is satisfied." And with affectionate inconsistency, totally different from her usual manner, she added, "Roland, you must not fast; you have dispensation; you are young, and to youth food and sleep are necessaries not to be dispensed with. Husband your strength, my child,—your sovereign, your religion, your country, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... like that," I said, and I won my neighbor's easy laugh, "I always like to give my own sex the benefit of the doubt, and I haven't any question but man's inconsistency is always attributable ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... the Dunciad still lives; ay, in spite of seeming inconsistency, we declare it to be immortal. For, build with what materials she may, the works of genius that stand in the world of thought survive all time's mutations, cemented by a spirit she alone can interfuse. It must not be said that a poem shelved is dead and buried. Open it at midnight, and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... to be caught in an inconsistency!" he answered. "I've been afraid, though, that this desire to roost in one place was a sign of incipient ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... interfere once every thousand years), must needs have been instituted by the devil. And so more than one girl in that nunnery, and out of it, too, believed in her inmost heart, though her 'Catholic principles,' by a happy inconsistency, forbade ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... begin to rave, and insensibly[96] led him towards the house, that we might be joined by some other company; and am convinced that the widow is the secret cause of all that inconsistency which appears in some parts of my friend's discourse, though he has so much command of himself as not directly to mention her, yet according to that of Martial[97], which one knows not how to render into English, Dum tacet hanc loquitur. I shall ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... his name—lived, as I have said, in Goodge Street, where he had unfurnished apartments. I often spent part of the Sunday with him, and I may forestall obvious criticism by saying that I do not pretend for a moment to defend myself from inconsistency in denouncing members of Parliament for their duplicity, M'Kay and myself being also guilty of something very much like it. But there was this difference between us and our parliamentary friends, that we always divested ourselves of all hypocrisy when we were alone. We then dropped ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... warm life they prefigured so close to him, seemed vulgar! And still he felt himself bound in honour; or judged from their manner that she and those about them thought him thus bound. He did not reflect on the inconsistency of the feeling of honour (living, as it does essentially, upon the concrete and minute detail of social relationship) for one who, on principle, set so slight a value on anything whatever that is merely relative ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... chapters on this subject[190] one wonders at the absence of the sense of proportion. Perhaps it was necessary, considering the place which the Hebrew tradition occupies in civilised thought, to show its utter inconsistency with the facts of nature, but it was equally necessary to show that it has its place in the history of human thought. The folklorist replaces it among the myths of creation, and then proceeds to analyse and value it. The Hebrew is shown by the myth he adopted to have frankly ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... quarrels arise which in the eye of wives give an air of tyranny to husbands. The tyranny of a husband is always a terrible excuse for inconsistency in a wife. Then, in their frivolous discussions they are enabled to prove to their families and to ours, to everybody and to ourselves, that we are in the wrong. If, for the sake of peace, or from love, you acknowledge the pretended rights of women, you yield ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... termed the pedantry of costume. "When playing Buridan, in the Tour de Nesle, he appeared as prime minister in the fourth act, clad in velvet, but with a plain woollen shirt, whereas the courtiers around him wore fine linen garnished with lace. On his being asked the reason of this apparent inconsistency, he replied, that he did not wear a linen shirt because at the epoch referred to in the piece, they were not in common use; 'Nay, more,' added he, 'a century afterward, Isabel of Bavaria was reproached ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... a fatal inconsistency when, in spite of his assumption that this poem is the very word of Krishna spoken at a particular time, in a particular place, he informs us that "all Indian authorities agree in pronouncing it to ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... of evading the responsibility of such inconsistency. The first is by an appeal to the Society's Constitution, and by claiming to interpret it strictly in accordance with the rules of law as applied to contracts, whether between individuals or States. The second ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... the Elders have entered the Palace and discovered Clytemnestra. But, as the mechanical arrangements of the Greek stage were not equal to this sudden change of scene, and since also it would, even with perfect machinery, have a tiresome interrupting effect, a slight confusion or inconsistency is allowed. We are supposed to be inside the house; but as a matter of fact the supposition is soon forgotten, and the play goes on without any attention to the particular place of the action. On Clytemnestra's speech ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... INCONSISTENCY'S paper is too much like a schoolgirl's composition for our pages; but she evidently tries to think, which is more ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... to be seen until the tent of Miriam was struck. She knew that Kenkenes was without, waiting for her, and with the delightful inconsistency of maidenhood, she dreaded while she longed to meet her beloved again. And when the moment arrived she slipped across the open space to the camel that was to bear her into Canaan, but in the shadow of the faithful creature, Kenkenes overtook her and ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... them of extravagance. Yet that did not prevent him to-day from saying that the War Office should be more generous in their financial treatment of the Territorial Force, and particularly of the Cadet Corps. Naturally Lord Peel did not refrain from calling attention to this inconsistency—common to most of the financial critics of the Administration—but nevertheless he made a reply indicating that the grants for the Territorial Force were being revised, presumably in an upward direction, since Lord O'Hagan ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... happiness, makes a mind which stands in need of variety, to shudder with fear. It is only when there is little wind in the sails, that we can keep close to shore; but the imagination roves at large, although affection be constant; it is so, at least, till the moment when misfortune makes every inconsistency disappear, and leaves but one thought and one grief in ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... I have thought that there is some inconsistency in our common mode of teaching languages. We are told that it is proper to begin first with the Latin, and, having acquir'd that, it will be more easy to attain those modern languages which are deriv'd from it; and yet we do not ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... not hold at heart, 'twere for him deceitful and for us dangerous. Where his star calls, let him walk sincerely. If his creed is insufficient or inconsistent, in his struggle he shall test it, and in his sincerity he must make up the insufficiency or remove the inconsistency. This is the only course for honourable men and no man should object. To repeat, it puts an equal burden on all—the onus of justifying the faith that is in them. Life is a divine adventure and he whose ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... much inconsistency in the passages of the poem in which the Vanars are spoken of, which seems to point to two widely different legends. The Vanars are generally represented as semi-divine beings with preternatural powers, living in houses and eating and ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... these is not a man in the world who hates and detests tyrants and tyranny more than I do; yet I trust that I may, nevertheless, be permitted to admire certain traits in the character of the brave and murdered Napoleon, without being justly accused of inconsistency. If I am asked whether I should like to live under such a tyrant and such a tyranny as existed in France, during the latter days of Napoleon's reign, I answer NO. But if I must submit to a tyrant, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... an ambassador to her Diet. When this inconsistency was remarked to him, he replied, that "that nomination was an act of war, which only bound him during the war, while by his words he would be bound both in war and peace." Thus it was, that he made no other reply to the enthusiasm of the Lithuanians than evasive ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... early led him to try and raise the devil and make him speak. He left nothing untried, even the wildest reading, to persuade himself there was no God; and yet believed meanwhile in the devil, and hoped to see him and converse with him! This inconsistency is hard to understand, and yet is extremely common. He worked with all sorts of obscure people; and above all with Mirepoix, sublieutenant of the Black Musketeers, to find out Satan. They passed whole nights in the quarries ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... inconsistency," said Mr. R., "for us to be laboring and spending our strength and lives for the conversion and salvation of others, and not be equally zealous for the souls of the children whom ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... preceding facts it appears that in this branch of the Company's government little regard has been paid to the ease and welfare of the natives, and that the Directors have nowhere shown greater inconsistency than in their orders on this subject. Yet salt, considering it as a necessary of life, was by no means a safe and proper subject for so many experiments and innovations. For ten years together ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... rendering any further declaration of his principles unnecessary. Not so Mr. Cobbett. What he has written is no rule to him what he is to write maintain the opinions of the last six days against friend or foe. I doubt whether this outrageous inconsistency, this headstrong fickleness, this understood want of all rule and method, does not enable him to go on with the spirit, vigour, and variety that he does. He is not pledged to repeat himself. Every ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... be surprised at this. On a wrong road, inconsistency is inevitable; if it were not so, mankind would be sacrificed. A false principle never has been, and never will be, carried out to ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... table, while Fielding said pointedly, 'Yes, Captain, you deserve your holidays,' and he emphasised the word. The Captain caught the allusion and laughed heartily. It was evident that he saw no inconsistency between the epigram and his professed ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... origin of what looks like folly; at home, on its native soil, it was found to be justifiable, as a proper growth of wisdom. In the vast conflict of taste, preference, conviction, there was no real inconsistency. It was but that the soul looked "upon things with [93] another eye, and represented them to itself with another kind of face; reason being a tincture almost equally infused into all our manners and opinions; though there ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... often been said that we have two souls. Araspes, in the Cyropedia, adopts this language to explain his inconsistency, and desertion of principle and honour. The two souls of man, according to this hypothesis, are, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... spy he had hated, though he never had found it in his heart to slay her as he had sworn to slay all Huns. He had attributed this weakness to the fact that she was a woman, although he had been rather troubled by the apparent inconsistency of his hatred for her and his repeated protection of ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... readable of his generation. He has the allurement of his own inconsistency, and the inconsistency of youth is its questing spirit, and, consequently, its ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... In apparent inconsistency with this declining state of belief in the higher classes, the multitude, without concern, indulged in the most surprising superstitions. With them it was an age of relics, of weeping statues, and winking pictures. The ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... standing there, encircled by, pigeons and forgotten by his fellow man, that there came to him a spiritual revelation. "Strange!" he thought; "I notice a certain inconsistency in myself, and even in my utterances. I am two men, one of whom is me and one not me; and the one which is not me is the one which causes me to fall into the arms of policemen and other troubles. The one which is me loves these pigeons, and desires ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... for me! O Emily—how sweet—how bitter are those words; what comfort, what anguish do they give! I ought not to doubt the steadiness of your affection, yet such is the inconsistency of real love, that it is always awake to suspicion, however unreasonable; always requiring new assurances from the object of its interest, and thus it is, that I always feel revived, as by a new conviction, when your words tell me I am dear to you; ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Coriolanus or of Brutus, "the high Roman fashion" of austere and heroic self-respect. In the other leading or dominant figure of this tragedy there is certainly discernible a genuine and thoughtful originality or freshness of conception; but perhaps there is also recognizable a certain inconsistency of touch. It was well thought of to mingle some alloy of goodness with the wickedness of Appius Claudius, to represent the treacherous and lecherous decemvir as neither kindless nor remorseless, but capable of penitence and courage in his last hour. But Shakespeare, I cannot but think, would have ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... to thank God for their sickness and pain—at the same time naively praying Him to take back His gift. This inconsistency was due to a combination of ignorance and the good old human foible of blaming some one else. Folks did not know then, as well as they do now, that they had the stomachache because they were too fond of rich dainties. The cause ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... admittedly are unready; an acceptance of new things on popular report, without scientific basis, and a lack of courage to maintain the truth for its own sake, in the face of so-called authority, and a craving to be modern. At the root of all this inconsistency and possibly its cause, is the lack of a guiding policy or aim, the lack of belief in the scientific or psychological basis of education, and consequently the want of that strong belief in absolute truth which helps the teacher ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... mood of philosophic calm, in which he was prepared to spend his evenings alone—as became a grub—and to await with dignified patience the return of his wife, it was in the nature of an inconsistency that he should have walked the floor of the dull little drawing-room like a lion in cage. It did not seem in keeping with the position of superior serenity which he had assumed, that, reading Babette's notes, he should have ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... appear, therefore, that there is need for great care and watchfulness in the management of Indian affairs. That same inconsistency of character and absence of definite aim, which are such notable Anglo-Saxon qualities and which adapt themselves so admirably to the requirements of Imperial rule, may in some respects constitute an additional ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... order that he might reign in his stead; that is, he was doing exactly that which Edward had charged upon his brother Clarence, and for which he had caused Clarence to be killed; and yet, with strange inconsistency, Edward espoused the cause of this Clarence of Scotland, and laid deep plans for enabling him to depose and ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... a man who, in early life, rejected all generalities and abstract propositions, and who became the most strenuous and violent of conservatives. But there is an interval when, as the quarrel with the Colonies went on, Burke was as revolutionary as Washington. The inconsistency is not as flagrant as it seems. He had been brought forward by the party of measured propriety and imperative moderation, of compromise and unfinished thought, who claimed the right of taxing, but refused to employ it. When he urged the differences in every situation and every problem, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... distinction, inequality, contrast, disparity, divergence, unlikeness, disagreement, dissimilarity, diversity, variation, discrepancy, dissimilitude, inconsistency, variety. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... There was an inconsistency in this affair, however, and Mrs. Vanderlyn thought herself a veritable Sherlock Holmes as she pounced on it. "But that note from Anna?" ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... reached here with the soldiers from Campania, Antony would certainly have come rushing from Brundusium instanter, just as he was, and would have burst into our city with all his armies like a winter torrent?[13] There is, moreover, a striking inconsistency in our conduct. Men who have long been campaigning voluntarily have put themselves at your service for the present crisis, regarding neither their age nor the wounds which they received in past years while fighting ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... thing!" Malcolm said, with his favourite air of detecting an inconsistency. "You want to work? Well and good, go ahead and do it! But don't expect me to tell you what to do. Your mother may have some idea. Your grandmother—and she was the loveliest woman I ever knew!—was ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... willing to recognize the Unions but being unwilling to be controlled by them, most of us find ourselves taking sides very quickly. We are often amazed to see how quickly we take sides, and what amazes some of us most is our apparent inconsistency. We find ourselves now on the Union side and now on the employer side in the dispute between Capital and Labour. We never know when we take up the morning paper, some of us, which side will be our next; and very often, if we ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... fishing grounds, unmolested highways of commerce, vineyards free from the tramp of armies. And with their desires fixed on these as needful, their attitude towards the political centralisation planned by their common ruler, often betrayed both ignorance and inconsistency. At various epochs some degree of imperialism for the Netherland group had been quite to popular taste. In Holland, Zealand and Hainaut, it had been conceded that Jacqueline of Bavaria was less efficient to maintain desirable conditions than her cousin of Burgundy, and the exchange of sovereigns ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... the happy extinction of the insurrection by the hanging of the last conspirator, William Garner, reported also, with enthusiastic indignation, the massacre of the Greeks at Constantinople and at Scio; and then the Northern editors, breaking from their usual reticence, pointed out the inconsistency of Southern journals in printing, side by side, denunciations of Mohammedan slave-sales, and advertisements ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Jati consists in the drawing of contradictory conclusions, the raising of false issues or the like with the deliberate intention of defeating an opponent. Nigrahasthana means the exposure of the opponent's argument as involving self-contradiction, inconsistency or the like, by which his defeat is conclusively proved before the people to the glory of the victorious opponent. As to the utility of the description of so many debating tricks by which an opponent might be defeated ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... on this was guilty of the following inconsistency; he pressed the paint carefully out of the brush into the pot. Having thus economized his material, he hurled the pot which contained his economy at "the Johnstone," he then adjourned to the "Peacock," and "away at ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... supposed to migrate into the bodies of beasts, or to revert to the condition of that species of creatures with which each tribe supposes itself to be related by ties of kinship or friendship. With the usual inconsistency of mythical belief, the souls of the dead are spoken of, at other times, as if they inhabited a spiritual world, sometimes a paradise of flowers, sometimes a gloomy place, which mortal men may visit, ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... the world must be appreciated by the evangelist, it must be undermined at its weak places, its inadequacy to interpret all that is present even in the mind which has accepted it—in other words, its inherent inconsistency—must be demonstrated; the attempt must be made to liberate the mind, so that it may be open to the impression of realities which under the conditions supposed it could only encounter with instinctive antipathy. It is necessary, therefore, ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... some commentators accuse Goethe of dramatic inconsistency and of interrupting the sequence of the action, because he makes Faust for a time return to his old speculations, and because Mephistopheles does not at once appear in the shape with which we are so familiar—with his 'red gold-trimmed dress ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... conflict or inconsistency between the treaty and the act of the Congress last cited, it is not necessary to invoke the well-settled principle that in case of such conflict the statute ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... Bible is filled throughout with references to clouds, stars, colours, and beauty, and often the mention of these is essential to the meaning of the parable or the message in which they occur. Here one must needs see the inconsistency of people who believe in the Bible, and yet deny us a right to talk about what we do not see, and for that matter what they do not see, either. Who shall forbid my heart to sing: "Yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller |
